Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 20

"It's just as well for us that there are some fools," answered the trainer.

"Do you think any other horse has a chance of beating The Pirate? I heard something about May Morn."

"Never mind what you hear; that's May Morn; looks like having a big chance, don't it?" said Nat, pointing to a horse that was coming round.

"Hullo! why that's Captain Brereton and be d.a.m.ned to him. What is that he is on? something that can gallop a bit," he added, as he saw another horse that had just come on to the course. "Is that one of yours, Mr Crotty?" he called out to that gentleman who was standing some yards off.

Kildare had been brought into the camp the night before, and Jack was giving him his first gallop on the racecourse.

Crotty and Jack had determined that they would not try to keep the secret of the horse's recovery any longer, as it would be difficult to do so; and they had already backed it for as much as Gideon's friends could pay. Even a tyro like Mr Gideon could see that the game little horse was of a very different cla.s.s from the plater May Morn.

"That, Mr Gideon! why that is Captain Brereton's Kildare; you ought to know the horse. And now what price Kildare? what price Bill Bledshaw?"

shouted Mr Crotty, and he burst into a peal of mocking laughter, in which a knot of men, his and Jack Brereton's friends, who were standing near him joined.

"The little horse is not much the worse for your kind attentions," he added.

"Curse 'em, but they have done us," said Nat Lane between his teeth.

Mr Gideon turned pale. The mocking laughter of Crotty and his friends maddened him. He was almost ruined, for the money he had staked represented pretty nearly all that he had in the world; his only hope was that still The Pirate might somehow win, and this hope was a very feeble one.

Shout after shout of laughter came from the men on the course, who seemed all to have been let into the secret by Crotty, and followed by the jeers of their enemies Mr Gideon and Nat Lane got into a cart and were driven back to Kimberley.

Mr Gideon and Nat Lane had several very anxious conversations before the day of the race, but their upshot was nothing but talk. It was impossible for them to hedge, and they could only trust in the chapter of accidents, which, however, did them no good.

The story of the Diggers' Stakes that year was a very simple one. It was rather a procession than a race. Kildare won with the greatest ease from The Pirate, while the rest of the field were beaten off. Good fellows on the Diamond Fields rejoiced, and for the most part had very substantial reasons for their joy.

Mr Gideon and his friends "the sharp division," as they thought themselves, for once were shorn, and they look back to that race with anything but pleasure. Mr Gideon paid all his losses, for he was afraid that if he did not an attempt might be made to prove he had something to do with stealing Kildare, and was anxious for some time lest Bill Bledshaw, who was afterwards caught before he got rid of Brereton's other horses, should give evidence against him. It remains only to say that Tom Bats had the pleasure of seeing Kildare win. His arm was well enough to allow him to be brought into Kimberley, and public feeling was so much in his favour, as the man who had rescued Kildare from the enemy, that the magistrate took a lenient view of the charge of a.s.sault on which he was brought up, and only inflicted a fine, which in a few minutes was raised for him by subscriptions of those who had backed Brereton's game little horse.

Story 11.

A QUEER RACE.

"Who's that man?" asked George Marshall of his friend Joe Warton, a Kimberley digger, as a slightly-made, good-looking man, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweeds, which no colonial tailor could have turned out, walked past them as they were sitting on the stoop of the club.

"That man! why he is the hero of the day--our last distinguished visitor, Sir Harry Ferriard. You will hear all about him if you are long on the Fields, for every one is talking about him."

"Sir Harry Ferriard! why he is the crack gentleman rider and owner of race-horses; the man who won last year's 'Grand National,' what's he doing up in Kimberley, of all places in the world?" asked George Marshall, looking through the door of the club at the gentleman in question with some interest.

"He is going a trip into the interior, when some friends of his for whom he is waiting arrive. I wish they would come and he were off, for I am sick of the sight of him. Since his arrival the camp in general has begun to take an interest in the British aristocracy. The proprietor of the club has procured a big 'Peerage and Baronetage,' which is always in use. Sir Harry of an evening tells stories of his friend Lord This, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Something Else, till one feels sick. Little Lazarus picked him up coming here in the coach. He likes you to think that he knew him at home, and that he is a fair sample of the pals he made in London. The little cad is as proud as a peac.o.c.k of his friend Sir Harry, and is never tired of drawing him out and showing him off."

"Shouldn't have thought they'd have stood much of that sort of thing here," said Marshall. "We have our faults, and perhaps our weaknesses, but I never would have said sn.o.bbishness was one of them."

"Well, we are a very 'English community,' as they are always saying in the papers. Besides, this fellow Ferriard makes himself infernally pleasant to every one, and half the fellows in the camp think they are going to get something out of him. Says that he has been turning his attention to the city and financial business lately, and that now he is out here he may as well take a look round and see what investments are sticking out. That makes him popular, you bet. He says he sees that Fools' Rush might be turned into a company, and floated as a big thing on the London markets. Thinks there is a fortune for any one who would buy up the shares in the Diddler Diamond Mining Company. He is going to make home capital flow into the place, and every one is to be better off even than they were in the wildest days of the share mania. Then he is very friendly to every one--asks you to stay with him at Melton the first winter you are in England, before he has known you for an hour.

And tells you about the shooting he will give you in Norfolk, and his moor in Scotland. The men all swear by him, and the women think that there never was any one like him, confound him!"

"You don't appear to like him, Joe, as much as the rest of 'em do," said Marshall, after he had listened to his friend's unusually long speech.

"Like him! I think him an infernal outsider; but I see he has settled down to play at poker, so I will go down to the Shorts', as he won't be hanging about there making himself a nuisance, as he generally does of an evening."

"Does Polly Short find him such a nuisance then? Looks the sort of man who could make himself pretty agreeable."

Warton answered by a growl rather than by any articulate speech, and George Marshall laughed to himself. It was not difficult to diagnose his friend's case, and guess why he did not particularly Ike the new arrival.

Polly Short was the prettiest girl on the Diamond Fields, and a good many men had been more or less in love with her, but Joe Warton had begun to be looked upon as the favourite. In fact, the other candidates had almost given up all hope; and Joe, though he was not exactly engaged, was supposed to have arrived at a very fair understanding with her. She, though she had not much harm in her, was decidedly fond of admiration; while Joe Warton, though he was a capital good fellow, was a little heavy in hand; and his great affection for Polly sometimes showed itself in fits of jealousy, which were as near surliness as they could be. Given a man like the brilliant Sir Harry Ferriard, and let him admire Polly as he well might--for she would be an unusually pretty girl, not only on the Diamond Fields, but anywhere else--it would be easy to understand, so George Marshall thought, how the course of his friend's true love should have got a little tangled.

"By the by, shall you ride Lone Star for her gallop to-morrow?" Joe Warton said to his friend after he had got up. "We shall win the Ladies' Purse with her again this year, seems to me."

"Yes, if nothing else is entered that can beat us," Marshall, who was a man not much given to express a decided opinion, answered.

Lone Star belonged to Joe Warton, and had been for some time in training, for the forthcoming Kimberley races, on George Marshall's farm. He had brought her into Kimberley the day before. She was a very nice mare, but of no particular cla.s.s. Warton had, however, won The Ladies' Purse, one of the minor races, with her the year before, and he had set his heart on winning the same race again that year.

"Wait till the entries are published and then I will tell you whether we shall win or no. The mare is fit enough as far as that goes, and she's a good bit honester than most of her s.e.x, but she is no wonder,"

Marshall added.

"Oh, they won't enter anything better than Lone Star--it wouldn't be worth their while when the winner is to be sold for fifty pounds,"

Warton said as he got up, and saying "good night" to his friend, walked up the street in the direction of the Shorts' house.

As luck would have it, however, it chanced that he saw a man he knew, whom he wished to speak to, in the bar of a hotel he was pa.s.sing. So he went in and said what he had to say to him, and was going to leave when a certain Mr Howlett appeared on the scene--who about the race meeting became an important individual on the Fields. He was called in the papers "our leading local bookmaker." He came into the bar, and seeing Warton began to talk to him about the races.

"Is that mare of yours, Lone Star, going to go for anything this time?

You were lucky to win with her last year," Mr Howlett said, looking at Joe in a way that somehow or other annoyed him.

"Lucky! what do you mean by that?" Joe asked; "she won easy enough; what would you like to bet against her winning again?"

"Well, it's full early to talk about betting, but I shouldn't mind just backing my opinion as I gave it. Though it ain't business, I will lay you fifty to twenty-five."

It happened from one cause and another that Warton was in an half-irritable, half-excited humour--when it's a relief to do anything.

He thought to himself that at the start it would as likely as not be odds on Lone Star, so he took the bet. Mr Howlett booked it with a twinkle in his eye that annoyed Warton.

"You're one of the sort who are always in a hurry; take the advice of one who knows a bit more than you do, and wait a bit in future," Mr Howlett said.

The man's manner irritated Warton strangely. "Like to go on with it, as it's such a bad bet for me?" he said.

Mr Howlett at first said he didn't want to go on with it. It wasn't business to bet before he knew the horses entered. He only had offered a bit of advice to Warton which was meant to be friendly, and if he didn't take it friendly he could take it how he chose.

Presently, however, he appeared to get irritated too by something some one else said, and it ended by his first doubling the bet, and then laying Warton three fifties to two against his horse.

As Warton walked on to the Shorts' he was half inclined to think that it would have been better for him if he had taken the bookmaker's advice, and not been in such a hurry. The entries would be published the next morning, and he might just as well have waited before he made his bet.

He might have guessed that Howlett, though he did seem at first unwilling to bet, was not the sort of man who would throw away his money merely because he got warm in a dispute.

When he bet against Lone Star he must have had an idea of some other horse being entered which could beat her. Still Warton thought he knew pretty well the horses entered for the race. It was then limited to colonial-bred horses, and he was sure that there was nothing to beat him.

The Short family consisted of the father, mother, and one daughter--the fair Polly. Old Tom Short was a taciturn old gentleman, who spent his evenings sitting in the corner of the stoop of his house, with a gla.s.s of whiskey-and-water before him, and a pipe in his mouth--now and then growling out some remark about the wages of the Kaffirs, the price of wood, or other subjects connected with the winning of diamonds. He met with his wife during a visit to England, after he made some money on the Australian gold-fields. If he had since repented of his bargain he kept it to himself. She in her way was a very fine lady, being the daughter of a bankrupt grocer, but also the half great-niece of a London alderman, who had been knighted. The alderman's picture always hung on the wall in the drawing-room of their house, and Mrs Short generally found an excuse for referring to it, when strangers were present, at least once in ten minutes. As one looked at Polly Short one wondered how she could have been the child of her parents, and where she could have got all her beauty and charm from, and the keen sense of humour that gave a mischievous twinkle to her eyes. Her love of admiration might have come from her mother, and she had, for all her dainty beauty, a curious look of her rugged old father. But there was much about her which seemed incongruous with her surroundings. When Warton came in he thought that he detected a considerable diminution in the cordiality of Mrs Short's greeting. Once he had been rather a favourite visitor, but since Sir Harry Ferriard had come on the scene, he had noticed a decided alteration.

"How do you do, Mr Warton, we 'alf expects Sir 'Arry would drop in this evening--have you seen him?"

"I don't think you will see him to-night, I just saw him setting down to a game of cards," answered Warton, whose expression by no means brightened up when he heard Ferriard's name as soon as he came into the house.

"Dear, dear, it's a pity he is so fond of play and gambling. But there, it's a weakness of the aristocracy; they are 'igh spirited, and must 'ave excitement, as I know only too well!" Mrs Short gave a sigh and looked at the picture.